Hello, welcome to visit Shanghai Forum
The talk isentitled that, as you can see here, soft power and hard power of nation states:post-colonial visions and state strategies in China and India.
I want to address, Iunderstand this is a public forum for public intellectuals; my work has tendedto be quite academic, though I have tried to reach out and I hope this is aneffort to reach out, but it still has a strong academic quality to it.
And the question thatinterests me is that, I mean you know both China and India were inspired byvery lofty ideals in the post war era as they became independent and so on. Andnow it’s been harmony as 50 plus, 17 plus, 3 or so. Over 70 years, where arewe. In that context, I think some of the goals have been achieved, which ismore one can save many. But many of them have been subverted I would say. Sowhy both colonial nations were guided by ideals of historical justice, of bothto the previous era of imperialist domination. Yet neither of them really lacksthe sense that they had a historical destiny. Both China and India sawthemselves as having a glorious base and this past would play a major role inthe cultural order of new Asia.
So what I want to explorehere is that, what is the effect of the impeditive of the state power in acompetitive system of territorial nation states. And how powerful was thatinfluence and how cultural power influence would be extended. S
The first half of thepresentation develops the historical and conceptual contexts to understand therelationship of the two factors in modern territorial states, that is idealismand real politic. And I survey this global transition, so the first part isnearly a global history of the transition from all style cultural imperialism,to what I call national imperialism, to the ideal of soft power and what kindof transformations that each one involve. And the second half sees if in factChina and India can develop new understandings of this relationship.
So let’s talk a littleabout cultural imperialism and imperialist regionalism. Now we all know thatthe old style cultural imperialism of the British and French were very wellknown and nationalists all over the world have made it very clear. But nobody Ithink has put it as succinctly as the Otto V.S. Naipaul in the bended riverwhen it says: The European wanted gold and slaves like everybody else. But atthe same time they wanted statues, put up to themselves as people who had donegood things for the slaves. Being an intelligent and energetic people and atthe peek of their powers. They could express both sides of their civilizednation. And they got both the slaves and the statues. I mean that was the bigsuccess of cultural imperialism. You got to love them for taking your stuff.Alright it’s Nelson Mandela wants put it I think he said: you came to SouthAfrica and you got us to prey, we closed the eyes and preyed, by the time weopened our eyes, our lames were gone. But this condition of cultural imperialism,clearly the nationalist in the rest of world got smart about this and becameincreasingly infeasible about the early twentieth century. In part this was theresult of the critic of the civilization of civilizing mission at the end ofthe World War I because it’s brutality and resonant ideals ofself-determination, as well as the Russian revolution with its very strongemphasis on the principle of national self-determination which then got theminto trouble. Just as important was the rule of latecomer imperialism ofGermans, Russians, Americans, Japanese…, which changed the reality and ideologyof imperialism. So we are talking about the traditional cultural imperialismmore to what I’m calling national imperialism. Because each of this base soughtto create an imperialist regional bloc where there’s Lebensraum for theGermans, the Monroe Doctrine for the Americans, the Soviet bloc for the Sovietand Pan-Asianism for the Japanese. These powers, what they did within these regionsis sought to utilize the national model of integration to dominate thesesocieties.
The 20th century in thewar in period bloc formation is a new stage for imperial advantage. These blocshave common currency, common standards, common laws, common institutions. Youset up puppet regimes, you set up mobilized parties, you have communist partieseverywhere who’s doing everybody’s beating. The major communist party’sbeating, you have controls through banking, infrastructure, and ultimately,this is critical, military power. Ultimately this military power resigns withthe imperial power.
At the same time, thereis also a massive ideology of a rhetoric of brotherhood, in the east Asia caseof course it is elder and younger brother, it’s the imperial tribute system. Inthe Soviet case also, the Chinese were very upset when they kept seeing: oh theyounger brother doesn’t know this and that. And by the way younger brother hasa model of production, which is more primitive than the slave model production.So this kind of patronization, this rhetoric of brotherhood, self-governance,tutelary democracy, common blood in culture, Germans never stop from claimingcommon blood in culture, not did the Japanese for them, they were not commonblood, common culture, why in reality of course racism and dominationcontinued. So this is the new cultural arrangement.
So the new power soughtto incorporate the exploited regions as part of the common region dominated bythe new imperial power but modeled on the idea of the nation. This is an unevendeveloped nation. In societies you have some parts of the nation that are welldeveloped, the others that are exploited. And this forces even old powers. Butthis is a very successful model, enough constituencies among nationalists, whobuy into this. And so the French and the British say: oh my god we should alsostart doing this. But they are a little too gum in the teeth. So the Britaintries to create a Stalin bloc and gives some kinds of national concessions,local self-government and this and that. The new French attitude to colonies issummed up by Albert Libron, whose goal was not to unite France to all thoselittle distant Frances, in order to promote them to combine the efforts to drawfrom one and other reciprocal advantage.
As I said, the French andBritish were not very successful; Germany was more so in central Europe, SovietUnion and US in the Caribbean basin were little more successful. Japan,however, is particularly advanced in creating a common imperial region of bloc,especially in Northeast and Southeast Asia.
The rhetoric ofimperialism also changes Japan from emphasizing difference between colonizersand colonized. You are really somebody who deserves to be subjected. Now sowhat we see is that, the conditions because of the changing circumstances, itbecame more effective for imperialists to foster modern and indirectlycontrolled institutions independencies. The aim was to control these areas bydominating the levers of mobilization as I said such as banks, transport,infrastructures, political institutions created to resemble the metropolis.Unlike British free trade imperialism, in the war imperialist attended to themoralization of the institutions and identities, even while racialism andnationalism accompanied the reality of military political domination. Further,creating similar institutions fostered a similarity of interests and goalsbetween elites in the metropolitan and dependent societies. This is verycritical for my understanding of soft power. Common institutions observe eliteallegiance. As I said, this is often the bases also of soft power.
So in the cold war Iextend that argument. I see the national imperialism successes as apple G. It’sheight in the cold war. The two super powers with clan states, the relationshipresembled very much the imperialism of nation states. Of course you know thesestates often have more freedom in the sense that they could bargain with eachother and so on, which may be happening again now. Military power and economiccontrols were in the background but very rare. You know how many militaryestablishments that U.S. had across the world, about 17000. Military power andeconomic controls were in the background, which were rare, mobilization wasconducted to creation of many similar institutions and practices of the freeworld versus the socialist bloc in which elites developed close interests withthe metropolis, chambers of commerce, clubs, communist party ties etc. Alsothere were massive cultural transformations eddied by cultural industries like Hollywood,Communist Youth Group, publishing industries, development and progressideologies. These were what we might say even in the cold war, elements of softpower. In Enlightenment designs of super power were often sculptured withnational interests and covertures prejudices, which constantly producedcontradictions and tensions, we this from Vietnam, Philippines, from Prague toAfghanistan. So they were not free obviously from these massive tensions. Itwas this configuration of national imperialism that led to the resistance tobold the Soviet Union as well as to the United States in many parts of theworld. We can think of national imperialism as occupying a space betweencultural imperialism and soft power, as a model of state-to-state domination, nationalism,imperialism and soft power.
Cultural imperialism isthe spread of dominance over underdeveloped decolonized others. Soft powerfocuses on the cotemporary competition between national influence in aglobalize space. In this idealized view, national imperialism has elements ofcultural imperialism, that is to say, economic and military control and softpower, rhetoric and institutions of equality, elite allegiance and so on.
Joseph Nye’s concept of soft power is quite vague. At onepoint he defines soft power as getting other countries to warn the outcomesthat a particular country wants, that is to say to call people rather thancause them. Now this is actually a much more strengthened definition than manyother statements by Nye and others about soft power. And they are all kinds ofstatements about a society’s desire for the stronger powers, cultural andpolitical institutions and the ladders of ability to attract others to it. Andthat’s what people think, you know, you become so attractive, people come toyou. While there may be some causal relationship between your superiority,between the two factors, desiring and admiring the good ease of anothercountry. This does not mean agreeing to the country’s wishes, or wanting theirpolitical outcomes. Indeed if you think of it for a minute, this is whatnationalism was. Nationalism says, I want everything you have, but I don’t wantyour political power, I don’t want to go with your outcomes. Historically,cooperating the people to want your outcomes, actually takes place post factor.After the hard intervention has been made, and soft power used to mollify andaccommodate key alliance, leaves me to believe, that hard power, military andeconomic, is an important if not invariable condition of soft power.
Neither India nor China fit well into this cold war order, even in the1950s the PRC, while chafing on the soviet patronizing behavior, could not beconsidered as cline state, not even a very junior partner. The relativeautonomy of the Tunisians can explain why they also took the lead in the NoneAlliance Movement, starting from the 1947 conference to Bandung and beyond.However, the efforts by these outliers to create and dominate an eternity orderdid not gain much traction beyond the 1950s. Now why does the Bandung movementfail? One is of course, cold war imperialism. The other is territorial andcompetitive conflicts. In other words, the territorial political form that theyinhabited the national form precluded a none-competitive or centrally cooperatedforms of interaction.
Pancheena was a newest failure. The classic tension is folded into newvisions of interstate relations and new forms of cultural power, exemplifiedretrospectively by the notion of soft power in the era of nation states. The goalof Pancheena was to enable non-interference by other states and to engage inrelationships by setting aside insoluble issues. That could still be usedinstrumentally in cooperate a contestant region and declare to be part of thenational territorial. The message for Bandung was that the PRC favor, peace,not war and revolution. But according to Chenjian, Chinese leaders were moreinterested in occupying a leading role in the world revolution. China continuedto provide support to revolutionary movements, destabilizing governments inSoutheast and South Asia, until the 1980s. It conducted what we might call aforeign policy of walking-on-two-legs, Pancheena in state-to-state relationsand revolutionary support in party-to-party relations. The Indian state was notso innocent either, even before the declaration of it and after its accept ofsigning the Pancheena, it used the non-interference doctrine to annex Goa.
The real margins of China as a super power in the 21st century have seenChinese leaders take the historical memories as a launching pad. I saw severalthis very quotation from the New York Times in several papers. Shanxi Provinceis the start of the ancient Silk Road. I can almost hear the ring of the camelbells and smell the wisp of the smoke in the desert. So there’s a wholeemotional investment in the society as well.
The consequences of Chinese neighborhood strategy have been felt moresharply in Southeast Asia. From the 1990s China had begun to cultivate verygood relations with ASEAN. China’s relationship with integrating Asia wasdramatically enhanced during the Asian financial crises, when China did notdevalue its currency. Also China was the first to sign ASEAN’s Treaty of Amityand Cooperation. And after that, all these other societies sort of werestumbling over each other to sign that. And ASEAN really looked like it wasgoing to take off as a format for Asian economic and cultural exchanges.
What are the options for India? How this square is vision of another worldorder influenced by Asia imagined by Nehru? This dynamic Asia from which greatstrings of culture flow in all direction gradually became static andunchanging. But it will be a new beginning for Renaissance of Asia, in whichthere would be no leaders and followers but all democratic. Indeed there can beno peace unless Asia pleases her part.
15 years ago, John, who wrote a fabulous book on India- China relations,predicted that India would no longer even remain the regional power in SouthAsia and become subordinated to the Chinese world order, while still strugglingwith lots of nation building problems as it does everybody with new passions ofdevelopment. India, however, is not completely to this vision. And this is mostclear on the China Pakistan CPEC Agreement. Also rapidly changing geopoliticalorder allows for new partnership with US, Japan and South East Asia. India mayalso be walking on two legs, deploring military and alliances to protect itsinterests, but cooperate with China’s vision of neo-traditional soft power.
Finally, China options for the future. To what extent can the cultural,economic and political flexibility of the imperial Chinese tribute frameworkprevail over the militaristic, nationalistic and expansionistic ambition? Chinais not playing in the same world as 50 years ago, when the US was able tocombine its cultural soft power with military and economic infra power, withSerbian constraining on its military power, although I’m sure it has no betteropportunity now than the president Donald Trump, can China deplore its softpower to influence outcomes among other nations with financial and economicleverage and a sense of fair exchange? If so, can we expect the peaceful riseof China?
I think there are two possible scenarios, one is a continued walking-on-two-legs;the second is more emphasis on soft power and economic diplomacy. Yet the softpower as I argued about is premised on some kind of hard power, in order to getother countries to want your outcomes.
In the age of many deterrence to open war field, the military componentwas probably being found in proxy wars, out sourced either to alliance,missionaries, rebels and terrorists. Whatever the vision of national power,Chinese soft power would have to cooperate more democratic participation, forinstance the Mekong communities of canyon activists in its ventures abroad. Bythe way, when the Mekong activists and the Southeast Asia activists and so onreally began to push back on Chinese hydropower, the Chinese hydropower did incooperate a bunch of things that cooperate social responsibilities and so on.So there is a response. The problem is in central Asia there is no such civilsociety to pressure it. China should also take the leadership in global climatechange activism, not only by ducting on technological approaches, but also bycreating a framework for community participation.
(This article is edited based on the recording and has notbeen reviewed by the speaker.)
